The proliferation of laptop and hand-held portable computers has produced a concomitant need for robust, reliable, and high performance wireless networks to maximize the mobility advantages of these devices and increase the ease of construction and management of these wireless networks. Current wireless networks, such as IEEE 801.11b, 801.11a, 802.11g, (etc) networks, are subject to certain limitations that can limit a mobile user's network performance and reliability. For instance, only a very limited number of radio channels are available. In the current state of the art, wireless access points cannot effectively share the same channel in the same area because of radio and control protocol interference. So, bandwidth over a given area is limited by the number of non-overlapping channels available. Also, current wireless networks require manual site engineering to control the placement of access points and channel distribution between access points, raising the cost and complexity of the wireless network installation process. Furthermore, user roaming between wireless access points is inconsistent. Once associated with an access point, a user will tend to remain associated with that access point even if another access point is capable of providing higher performance for the user. It would be desirable to provide wireless networking solutions which overcome the above described inadequacies and shortcomings of current wireless networks.